Creators & Innovators, Apple's Secret Sauce

How Market Research propels Innovation.

Written By Miriam Clifford

The image above is a starting point to answer this question: How do we drive innovation? The artist here writes: “Together We Create.” This is an excellent visual microcosm of why community matters. Essentially, it is the coming together of creators and adopters - people who create need others to share their innovation with the world. Innovation does not exist in a vacuum. This interplay between creators and their users, customers, or (however you define them) and their communities is essentially the basis of market research. We hope to not only understand our creation, product or service, but the people whose lives it influences and helps. And together, we create something even better for the world, a redefined version of our vision emerges refined by millions. Every single human invention can be said to have benefited from adoption - and without it, so many human accomplishments would be lost in the sands of time. Truly, together we create. We create new products, services, and perhaps more profoundly new messages, life experiences, and ways of living.

What is Market Research?

Market Research is the study of consumer behavior, focusing on needs, interests, and preferences. The field finds and extrapolates insights that define “the voice of the consumer.” Market insight professionals pride themselves on bringing empathy for the consumer to business decisions, and understanding their needs (both met and unmet). We often hear of MR being used for decision-making because it aligns business goals with the needs of customers.

MR is a mixture of both a creative and analytical competency, it blends together a qualitative understanding of people through interviews and other forms of observation and human interaction, with the application of data analysis, which forms the quantitative piece. It should be based in sound scientific procedures and methods based in statistical or research-based analysis. In fact, MR relies on data in different forms to understand consumers more clearly. It aims to provide a picture of the consumer and truly understand their motivations. Research design can take many different forms such as surveys, observations, and focus groups. The field also relies on a wide wealth of existing research and data, some which are publicly available, and others which can be purchased for a particular industry (syndicated data).

Market research is based on behavioral research and many practices in the field were first used in psychological studies. Tools like the Likert Scale were developed to study human behavior in different contexts, mainly to measure attitudes (McLeod 2019) and provide a reliable tool to study complex human behaviors. In a way, Market Research is the intersection between business and psychology.

Why should Market Research matter to companies like tech?

Market Research helps drive innovation through consumer adoption of new products and technologies by understanding their unmet needs. One aspect of the field is understanding target customers, and more specifically consumer segments to market your product or service effectively. Seeing it another way, it is putting your product or service in front of the audience that needs and/or wants it. And other times, it is convincing your target audience that they need a product or technology to solve a problem, and that product doesn’t even exist yet in their life. Perhaps they haven’t even dreamed it up yet or imagined it as useful in their life. That’s where Market Research comes in, it can tell you who your customer is - what they care about - and how to reach them.

Let’s look at an example.

APPLE’S SECRET SAUCE

Apple created a formula for success by tapping into what customers wanted - before they knew it - and by using clever marketing and design to make the product desirable and accessible. Yet, perhaps the most important thing Steve Job did was develop a true, dedicated community around his products that still exists today and an authentic interplay between creator, creation, and community. Apple came alive - it was no longer just a product: it was an experience, it was an art, and it was a new way of seeing things. The user experience guided Apple - in real time. The culture around the products Jobs created spoke for itself. Consumer-centric, organic marketing continues to drive innovation today.

When asked about market research, Steve Jobs said, (You can read below or listen on YouTube here)

“Well, I think in the early days it was easy because you’d go to a Homebrew Computer Club meeting and there was your whole market, and you could find out what they thought. In fact, you could show them your product and see what they thought, and because products were much simpler then, within a few months you could change it all around and come back and show them a new one. But as the market got more sophisticated, it was less easy to do that, and the problem is market research can tell you what your customer thinks of something you show them, or it can tell you what your customers want as an incremental improvement . . . But very rarely can your customers predict something that they don’t even know they want yet. As an example, no market research could have led to the development of the Macintosh, or the personal computer in the first place. So there are these non-incremental jumps that need to take place where it is very difficult for market research to really contribute much in the early phases of thinking about what those should be. However, once you made that jump, possibly before the product is on the market, or even after, is a great time to go check your instincts with the market place and verify that you’re on the right track. And usually when you show people something they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s fantastic!’”

Although Jobs here seems to have waffled back and forth between the role of market research, he concludes that it was a necessary piece of confirming his instincts. In a blog for FlexMR titled, “Was Apple Founder Steve Jobs Right About Market Research,” Christopher Martin, a marketing & brand strategist, further suggests that Apple’s story has been misinterpreted to focus solely on the legacy of its design and agility while forgoing the role customer empathy played in its success. Martin further elaborates that market research is essential to their success. He explains,

“Apple surveys its customers to supplement their own internal data and thinking. This came to light in 2012 when, during a legal scuffle with Samsung, the company’s VP of Product Marketing submitted a document to the court explaining why documents relating to Apple’s market research (specifically iPhone surveys) should be kept secret.”(Martin of FlexMR).

MARKET RESEARCH ALLOWS US TO SEE OUR CUSTOMERS MORE CLEARLY

Granted, Jobs had a genius for marketing and understanding the pulse of technology, and the importance of technology’s role in progress. But on the other hand, he also cared about customers - the essential core of market research. In an insightful article, “Steve Jobs Biggest Talent Wasn’t What You Think It Was,” Fast Company’s resident Apple expert Chuck Salter explains that the main skill Jobs possessed was customer empathy.

Salter interviews executive editor Rick Tetzeli, author of Becoming Steve Jobs, who further adds,

“One of the things (Jobs) understood from the very beginning was that the technology doesn’t matter to the customer,” says Tetzeli.

“It’s all about what the user gets out of this machine. . . . .Everybody else insisted on selling their computers by their specs, by how fast it was, by how powerful it was. . . and Apple always understood that it wasn’t the way to sell. Steve and Regis McKenna who was one of the great early marketers of Silicon Valley made it seem as if you could just pick this up and do things at home. . . All of sudden this Mac2 was something you could do your recipes on and that’s not what that computer was originally, it was good for programmers . . . The machines had to catch up to his vision, over time.”

Jobs understood clearly why consumers needed and desired from computers - he tapped into simple unmet needs (ie getting recipes), with that of the revolution of computing power - and he did so at the right time, through the right medium, in the right way, with the right message all while listening to the voice of the consumer. It is no wonder Jobs’s success catapulted - he was not only on the beat, he created the beat and knew how to play it.

What are unmet needs and Why do they Matter?

An “unmet” need can be defined as anything that solves a customer problem. And this is the important part, they may be aware of this need, or not. Good market research judges both customers’ current needs and their untapped needs that can be addressed. It is then easy to see that unmet needs have marketing potential. Simply put, they address problems.

In other words, good market research taps not just into past behavior, but into what causes problems, frustration, or inefficiencies in daily life. It hopes to really help people live better lives, by matching its product to a need or experience.

Take communication for example - humans have communicated since the beginning of time. The tools have changed dramatically over time, and it’s hard to imagine life before communication devices existed. Yet, what if a new way of communicating was invented? Would consumers want to run to adopt this new technology and forget phones? It didn’t happen with the invention of the internet. In fact, email and the internet expanded phone use, and made it better.

What if this technology was never adopted? Is it that they didn’t care about it or they simply didn’t understand how it would improve their lives? Did the technology need to go through additional steps before it was applicable to most people’s needs?

MARKET RESEARCH TAPS INTO CUSTOMER EMPATHY BY CONSIDERING THEIR EXPERIENCES

Humans' desire to communicate is a vital and psychological need at its core. New forms of messaging are always emerging - but adoption of new forms is not always easy. Take cloud technologies, virtual reality, WiFi, or AI. These technologies seemed more like sci-fi movie when they first came out, but today they are powering our homes and allowing us to continue to learn and work in new ways Other technologies may be ahead of their time, and come before people truly even understand how to incorporate them in daily life or truly appreciate them.

Gladys Mae West of “Hidden Figures” for example, played a pivotal role in laying the foundation for GPS modeling in her mathematical work before people even understood how this technology would change the world fundamentally. Yet even she, a mathematician at heart, at times prefers uses a pen and paper map, to hash out mathematical calculations. Innovation does not have to compete with old forms of doing things, rather it has to make them useful in people’s lives, and that is one of the challenges that FB's Meta will face in coming years, and why they have invested so much in market research recently.

TECHNOLOGY AND ADOPTION

We are at the point in history where many new technologies will continue to outpace adoption rates, only to discover later their usefulness. Overall, it is a sign of the deep-seated disruption technology is creating in our daily lives. And often, a technology precedes its widespread adoption, but that doesn’t mean the technology is irrelevant to consumers or misplaced. But it is important to remember that innovation is not one-sided - remember the image at the beginning of the blog, “Together we Create.”

Customer adoption also refines technology and makes it better. Sometimes, it takes several forms of a new product to emerge before consumers find how it is useful in their daily lives. But what if we could change that? What if we could explain the benefits or speed this process up?

Market research allows us to take those insights about consumer behavior, and find ways of making new tech relatable, accessible, and applicable to solving consumer problems. Market Research analyzes the market itself - opportunities for growth, threats from competitors, and areas for innovation. It also considers our habits and deep-seated behavior and barriers to entry of new technologies or products. The techniques of the trade are both qualitative (focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnography) as well as quantitative (different types of surveys, casual research, sales data, market data, etc) It can also include secondary data or existing data or research that is collected for purposes other than the task at hand. It can include government data (IE census data), organizational data, white papers, reports, etc.

Another important component might be non-custom, syndicated research, or data collected by market research firms for a specific industry, but not custom for the client. Generally, syndicated data includes trends and analysis of particular products or services, to suit the needs of particular types of industries, and their target customers. It can include panel data, such as those provided by large companies like Nielsen, IRI, and Spins. Compiling this data can be difficult on the scale these companies do it, as they have relationships with major retailers that allow for it.

A different form of Market Research encompasses companies that do “social listening.” These companies focus on listening to the voice of the consumer via social media - their ability to catch an emerging PR crisis or measure the efficacy of a marketing campaign is key. A top player in this space is Brandwatch.

Why did I began a career in Market Research?

I get asked this question all the time. I was drawn to the field of Market Research after seeing the influence the field has on propelling innovation. I am a graduate student in the Marketing Research program at Michigan State University. People often ask me what led me to market research after being involved in content development. The truth is, content marketing and market research are very intertwined. Both fields work to understand target audiences and draw on insights to create content that speaks to consumers.

From a human perspective, I wanted to make marketing more inclusive - to be part in helping change people’s daily lives and experiences, and to figure out where companies missed the mark, and where they could improve in meeting people’s expectations.

Today, more than ever, consumers have the power to research every aspect of a company. People want to buy products they believe in - and an organization’s story and core values is just as important as its products. We live in the age of change, and that includes things such as innovation, social justice, environmental and other initiatives that companies must embrace to ride the train of progress - without market research companies often fall behind the mark of what consumers want to see and need to solve problems in their daily lives. Market research allows us to not only tap into these changes but actively participate in them. Rather than following a trend - we can shape the future and grow in our relationship with customers by being the innovators in our field. This allows us to serve the people that come along on the journey to support us, while growing our vision of the world.

Thank you for listening.

To work with me or ask a question, simply email me at joymailed@gmail.com